YouTube on Wednesday announced that the popular video-sharing Website will now support HTML5 for video playback. HTML5, for the uninitiated, is an in-development Web standard that aims to add various niceties and enhancements to the modern Web-browsing experience. In YouTube’s case, that means that browsers that support the HTML5 tag and can play H.264-encoded video [...]
Archive for January, 2010
MIT creates picture-driven programming for the masses
Computer users with rudimentary skills will be able to program via screen shots rather than lines of code with a new graphical scripting language called Sikuli that was devised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a basic understanding of Python, people can write programs that incorporate screen shots of graphical user interface (GUI) elements [...]
Available IPv4 addresses dwindle below 10 per cent
The long-awaited depletion of the Internet’s primary address space came one step closer to reality on Tuesday with the announcement that fewer than 10 per cent of IPv4 addresses remain unallocated. The Number Resource Organization (NRO), the official representative of the five Regional Internet Registries, made the announcement. The Regional Internet Registries allocate blocks of [...]
HP Plans Line of (Relatively) Affordable 3-D Printers
Printers equipped for 3-D are poised to go mainstream, now that Hewlett-Packard plans to start selling them. The company’s inkjet and laser printers are staples in offices and homes. The devices, which can crank out three-dimensional plastic models through a process similar to printing text on sheets of paper, have until recently been available only [...]
The Danger of Hackers Getting Into Airplanes’ Flight Computers
As if we didn’t have enough with crotchbombs and the TSA, the FAA is now saying that “[passenger networking] may result in security vulnerabilities” exposing flight systems to hackers. But, how serious is this danger? The FAA says that their airworthiness tests “do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for these design features.” So [...]
OAuth and OAuth WRAP: defeating the password anti-pattern
The developers behind the OAuth protocol have developed a new variant called OAuth WRAP that is simpler and easier to implement. It’s a stop-gap solution that will enable broader OAuth adoption while OAuth 2.0, the next generation of the specification, is devised by a working group that is collaborating through the Internet Engineering Task Force [...]
Windows plagued by 17-year-old privilege escalation bug
A security researcher at Google is recommending computer users make several configuration changes to protect themselves against a previously unknown vulnerability that allows untrusted users to take complete control of systems running most versions of Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability resides in a feature known as the Virtual DOS Machine, which Microsoft introduced in 1993 with [...]
Security researcher IDs China link in Google hack
The malicious software used to steal information from companies such as Google contains code that links it to China, a security researcher said Tuesday After examining the back-door Hydraq Trojan used in the hack, SecureWorks researcher Joe Stewart found that it used an unusual algorithm to check for data corruption when it transmits information. The [...]
Bill Gates launches new site, offering peek inside his mind
Turns out Bill Gates’ attention-getting debut on Twitter was just the prelude. The Microsoft chairman and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair today is launching a new site, dubbed The Gates Notes, where he’ll be writing about what’s on his mind, posting information from his trips, and sharing excerpts from his exchanges with experts and [...]
How To Remote-Start Your Car Using Little More Than A $10 Cell Phone
A man named Dave has wired a cell phone into his car so that it can be started from anywhere in the world. Marginally useless, yes. But also very, very cool. Phone-based remote-start technology is nothing new. Car alarm companies have been experimenting with it for years, and one has even brought a viable, iPhone-based [...]